Sunday, November 9, 2008

I just figured out why the internet is so addicting. I got one of those stupid "help us make the internet better" survey things from Yahoo. And I am pissed off at Yahoo anyway for raising the price of domain name renewal from $9.95 to $34.95. (I think they did it to inflate their assets for the Google buyout, but that is a different story). So I thought I would do the survey just to relieve some stress and skew the survey results. But it turned out to be a comparison of Yahoo and Google when you do a search. It made me come up with 3 things I always wanted to search for but never have, which is stupid anyway. Unless you have been have holding back on that search for "Swedish Midget Porn", you probably have done a search for whatever you wanted to search for. But I figured I would play along, after all, my name would be entered in the $1000 drawing!

So I decided to ask these 3:

1. Why did Yahoo raise the price of domain name renewal to $34.95? (What pisses me off here is banners on my Yahoo mail still offers domain names for $1.99 / year. I am a Yahoo affiliate through Commission Junction [http://cj.com] and Yahoo does not allow affiliates to promote the $1.99 offer.)

2. Why does Yahoo tech support suck? I had a bad experience with my Yahoo music subscription 2 years ago. It just quit working and they said no refunds, But "I couldn't talk to tech support directly, this is just the call center"!? They never did fix it, but I got my damn money back. Can you tell I am still pissed?

3. Why do I get these stupid surveys and nobody ever contacts me, and nothing is ever done?

So I actually had to do a search for the above topics on Google, then Yahoo. And what is ironic, if I had already written this blog, I may have found this post in the search results. (at least on Google :). Anyhow, I couldn't find any relevant topics on my searches and I didn't want to waste a bunch of time anyway, so I just went through the motions so I could post my derogatory comments.

My whole point here is I was so overwhelmed by the experience that I had an adrenaline rush with a sadistic undertone. For a while I was so focused on the internet, it felt like I was in a whole different place, not sitting in front of my computer in my underwear. It was a "trip" similar to the drug induced days of my youth. It is the out-of-body experience that becomes the addictive part of the internet (unless you really do search for Swedish Midget Porn). When I was finally done with the survey and clicked out, I came back to reality and only then realized how far gone I really was. This not the only instance I have observed this behavior in my self. Just like the concentration it took to post today...